SFDB Blogments

It's time for another installment of SFDB Blogments [definition].

Art Basel posting is at full throttle this week in the South Florida blogosphere. Things started spooling up late last week and have only increased in intensity. At SFDB, I'm not boycotting Art Basel posts but I have decided to really keep their inclusion in the Sift to a minimum. There's just so much content being produced that it's impossible to keep up with it in a Sift format. I'm thinking that readers who are really interested in the week's events can peruse the blogosphere themselves and find interesting reads about Art Basel without my help.

I've continued to watch Miami Beach 411 after noticing a decline in posting and what appears to be a format change. Last night I sent an email to Gus, MB411's editor, and tried to get the scoop. Here's a little of what he had to say...

I know things have slowed down, but I don't think our focus has changed very much. We still try hard to be entertaining and publish stories that help helpful for our readers, but with the changing economy, we've had to scale back the amount of stories we publish.

At Miami Beach 411, we do things different than other local publications. For example, I believe artists should be well compensated for their talent, which means we pay our writers 4 times the amount for a story that other publications like the New Times pay.

We have a lot of great things in the works. Matt Meltzer and I are also working on making more on camera videos. We're still a little rough around the edges, but even still, the video I made about taking better tour photos was very well received by our customers. In case you missed it, here's a link.

That makes me feel better.  Thanks, Gus.

There's a lot of blogs out there that aren't on the SFDB blogroll that I've been watching. I'm hoping to do a little house cleaning sometime around the New Year and spruce up the blogroll. There is a fair amount of dead wood on the blogroll that I'll remove and replace with some fresh sites for readers to visit.

Speaking of which, the famously on again/off again Critical Miami has lapsed back into their semi-state of dormancy after a lively return. I'm hoping the previously mentioned significant art event changes that. Other blogs that appear to have less of a chance of resuscitation right now include Mike LaMonica, Brickell Life and Blind Mind. Sometimes I wonder what happened to the motivation that regularly used to drive these blogs.

Finally, I thought I would just mention linking again, since it's something that I firmly believe in and try to promote with SFDB. I cruise around the blogosphere and some local newspaper blogs a lot and it's amazing how often I see the same story mentioned at different places with absolutely no attribution. The RSS feed timestamps tell the story and it's easy to identify the worst violators. However, we all could benefit from a little refresher like this post from 10,000 Words, "When To Link Back, Give Credit In Your Posts." They offer 5 tips but here's my favorite, which coincidentally is also the easiest...

2. Credit where you saw it first.

They may not have broken the news, but they broke it to you. Give them credit for reaching you first. This doesn’t need to be elaborate. Even a link back with a H/T (hat tip) or Via or “As mentioned at…” is enough when it’s something short, or something now ubiquitous. It’s nice to be acknowledged, and it may give your readers somewhere else to look for more information.

It's just simple blog etiquette, folks.




.